As we're approaching the end of the 2015 F1 Pre-Season tests, teams are starting to get a better idea of how they might perform during races once the regular season starts in Melbourne, Australia in two weeks time.

Race on Sunday, sell on Monday: a time-honed mantra for automakers involved in motorsports. With its latest Elise variant, though, Lotus has turned this into a “race on Sunday, drive to work on Monday” kind of thing.

According to documents filed at Companies House, the Lotus Group posted a £71.1 million (US$110 million) loss in the 2014 financial year that ended on March 31. This is both bad and, surprisingly, good news.

We already knew that Lotus was bringing a refreshed version of its Evora (pictured) to next year’s Geneva motor show but now we have news of more variants based on it. There have even been talks of turning it into a crossover, on top of the obligatory roadster they should have made by now...

Lotus is renowned for producing great handling cars with an emphasis on 'adding lightness'.

However, most models don’t really have all that much power, and for instance, it would not be conceivable for a 2005 Elise to be as fast as this modified example driven by Jay Leno – it has 680 hp and it’s actually mostly hand-built, using the Lotus as a base.